Political and Social Correlates of Covid-19 Mortality

Abstract

Do political and social features of states help explain the evolving distribution of reported Covid-19 deaths? We identify national-level political and social characteristics that past research suggests may help explain variation in a society's ability to respond to adverse shocks. We highlight four sets of arguments---focusing on (1) state capacity, (2) political institutions, (3) political priorities, and (4) social structures---and report on their evolving association with cumulative Covid-19 deaths. After accounting for a simple set of Lasso-chosen controls, we find that measures of government effectiveness, interpersonal and institutional trust, bureaucratic corruption and ethnic fragmentation are currently associated in theory-consistent directions. We do not, however, find associations between deaths and many other political and social variables that have received attention in public discussions, such as populist governments or women-led governments. Currently, the results suggest that state capacity is more important for explaining Covid-19 mortality than government accountability to citizens, with potential implications for how the disease progresses in high-income versus low-income countries. These patterns may change over time with the evolution of the pandemic, however. A dashboard with daily updates, extensions, and code is provided at https://wzb-ipi.github.io/corona/.

Women Leaders and Pandemic Performance: A Spurious Correlation

“…These patterns cohere with other analyses. Bosancianu et al (2020) find that institutional trust and bureaucratic capacity lower death rates throughout the pandemic, while corruption raises death rates as the pandemic lengthens. They find no relationship between women leaders and deaths.…”

Democracy, Autocracy, and Emergency Threats: Lessons for COVID-19 From the Last Thousand Years

“…They argue that evidence from a century or more shows that democracies are more likely to win wars when engaged against autocracies, and the same may hold true in the fight against disease. See Bosancianu et al 2020 as well as Cheibub, Hong, and Przeworski 2020 for recent empirical evidence on state characteristics and COVID-19. local action on its own may not suffice.…”

COVID-19 Incidence in Europe: Drivers and Government Interventions

“…The differences between regional and national factors, and especially government efficiency, lead to little variations in the infection cases. Political and social factors are responsible only for certain evolutions in the infection rates, and other characteristics of the governments, such as being populist or led by women, should be considered (Bosancianu et al, 2020).…”